Issues
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Cover image
Cover Image
Cover: A Drosophila embryo with FasII (green) labelling motor neuron axons, Elav (pink) labelling neuronal nuclei, and DAPI (blue) labelling all nuclei. This image was taken by Soraya Villaseca Herrera at the 2018 EMBO Practical Course on Developmental Biology in Quintay, Chile, and chosen by readers of the Node (http://thenode.biologists.com).
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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
SPOTLIGHT
An interview with Richard Gardner
Summary: Richard Gardner, winner of the BSDB's Waddington Medal, discusses his life in research, his decades as a policy advisor and his thoughts on mentorship.
MEETING REVIEW
PRIMER
TOR signaling in plants: conservation and innovation
Summary: This Primer gives an overview of the role of TOR signaling networks in plant growth and development, highlighting similarities and differences between the function of TOR complexes in plants and animals.
REVIEW
Getting leaves into shape: a molecular, cellular, environmental and evolutionary view
Summary: This Review discusses the molecular pathways that determine how a leaf grows and acquires its shape, and the effect of environmental and evolutionary factors on leaf shape diversity.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Gibberellins negatively modulate ovule number in plants
Summary: The first demonstration that gibberellins are involved in the determination of ovule number in plants, via the activity of DELLA proteins – negative regulators of gibberellin signaling.
Intracellular biosynthesis of lipids and cholesterol by Scap and Insig in mesenchymal cells regulates long bone growth and chondrocyte homeostasis
Summary: Conditional deletion of genes that regulate intracellular cholesterol biosynthesis in mesenchymal cells or chondrocytes shows that precise regulation of biosynthesis is required for chondrocyte homeostasis and long bone growth.
Retinoic acid receptor signaling is necessary in steroidogenic cells for normal spermatogenesis and epididymal function
Summary: Expression of a dominant-negative form of retinoic acid receptor α in Leydig cells reveals a role for this receptor in male infertility.
Bsx controls pineal complex development
Summary: The highly conserved homeodomain transcription factor Bsx controls zebrafish pineal gland development, laterality of the epithalamus and melatonin production.
The Drosophila Hox gene Ultrabithorax controls appendage shape by regulating extracellular matrix dynamics
Summary: The Drosophila Hox gene Ultrabithorax, which distinguishes halteres from wings, downregulates Matrix metalloproteinase 1 expression to maintain ECM protein levels and so form the haltere globular shape instead of the flat wing.
In locus analysis of patterning evolution of the BMP type II receptor Wishful thinking
Summary: wit is regulated by alleviation of Brinker repression in two evolutionarily divergent Drosophila species, in which evolutionary changes in wit expression patterns have occurred in cis.
Hedgehog-GLI signaling in Foxd1-positive stromal cells promotes murine nephrogenesis via TGFβ signaling
Summary: Development of the embryonic kidney involves interactions between hedgehog, smoothened and GLI3 in cortical stromal cells that control nephron formation via TGFβ signaling.
Oncogenic cooperation between Yorkie and the conserved microRNA miR-8 in the wing disc of Drosophila
Summary: miR-8 controls growth and tumorigenesis in the Drosophila wing epithelium.
PDGF-A suppresses contact inhibition during directional collective cell migration
Highlighted Article: Contact inhibition of lamellipodia formation is promoted by a fibronectin-integrin-syndecan-based control module and ephrin B1 in the Xenopus gastrula mesendoderm, and differentially suppressed by PDGF-A to allow for oriented collective migration.
Sox30 initiates transcription of haploid genes during late meiosis and spermiogenesis in mouse testes
Summary: Analysis of Sox30 mutants using ChIP-seq, meiotic analysis and RNA-seq identifies the direct targets of Sox30 and reveals that Sox30 is a transcription factor of postmeiotic genes in mouse testes.
Two distinct ontogenies confer heterogeneity to mouse brain microglia
Summary: Defective Hoxb8 microglia, a proposed cause of trichotillomania-like behavior in mice, have a distinct ontogeny relative to canonical microglia, providing the brain with greater microglial functional diversity.
Defective endothelial cell migration in the absence of Cdc42 leads to capillary-venous malformations
Highlighted Article: Vascular malformations can arise as a consequence of defective cell migration in areas in which proliferation is naturally high, as endothelial cells are unable to re-distribute within the vascular network.
Two independent sulfation processes regulate mouth-form plasticity in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus
Summary: Mouth-form dimorphism in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus is an established model for understanding molecular mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity. Here, we discover that plasticity is regulated by two independent sulfation events.
Stratum recruits Rab8 at Golgi exit sites to regulate the basolateral sorting of Notch and Sanpodo
Summary: Stratum, the putative guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rab GTPases, is involved in restricting the apical delivery of Sanpodo to control spatiotemporal Notch activation following asymmetric cell division in Drosophila sensory organs.
Bmp2 and Notch cooperate to pattern the embryonic endocardium
Summary: Myocardial Bmp2 and endocardial Notch signaling cooperate to pattern the embryonic valve region: Bmp2-pSmad1/5 induces Jag1 ligand expression and interacts with N1ICD to drive target gene expression.
Amniotic ectoderm expansion in mouse occurs via distinct modes and requires SMAD5-mediated signalling
Summary: Clonal analysis shows that four distinct progenitor groups expand the normal amniotic ectoderm differently. In SMAD5-deficient mice, an undersized and abnormally nonsquamous amnion involves at least two impaired progenitor groups.
Collaborative repressive action of the antagonistic ETS transcription factors Pointed and Yan fine-tunes gene expression to confer robustness in Drosophila
Summary: Recruitment of the transcriptional repressor Yan and the co-repressor Groucho by the transcriptional activator Pointed confers precision and robustness to the gene expression dynamics that drive developmental cell fate transitions.
TECHNIQUES AND RESOURCES
SLAM-ITseq: sequencing cell type-specific transcriptomes without cell sorting
Highlighted Article: A novel in vivo metabolic RNA sequencing method, SLAM-ITseq, enables cell type-specific transcriptome analysis without time-intensive cell or RNA sorting steps, making it accessible to a broader research area.
CORRECTIONS
Correction: Combinatorial actions of Tgfβ and Activin ligands promote oligodendrocyte development and CNS myelination (doi:10.1242/dev.106492)
Call for papers: Uncovering Developmental Diversity
Development invites you to submit your latest research to our upcoming special issue: Uncovering Developmental Diversity. This issue will be coordinated by our academic Editor Cassandra Extavour (Harvard University, USA) alongside two Guest Editors: Liam Dolan (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austria) and Karen Sears (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
Choose Development in 2024
In this Editorial, Development Editor-in-Chief James Briscoe and Executive Editor Katherine Brown explain how you support your community by publishing in Development and how the journal champions serious science, community connections and progressive publishing.
Journal Meeting: From Stem Cells to Human Development
Register now for the 2024 Development Journal Meeting From Stem Cells to Human Development. Early-bird registration deadline: 3 May. Abstract submission deadline: 21 June.
Pluripotency of a founding field: rebranding developmental biology
This collaborative Perspective, the result of a workshop held in 2023, proposes a set of community actions to increase the visibility of the developmental biology field. The authors make recommendations for new funding streams, frameworks for collaborations and mechanisms by which members of the community can promote themselves and their research.
Read & Publish Open Access publishing: what authors say
We have had great feedback from authors who have benefitted from our Read & Publish agreement with their institution and have been able to publish Open Access with us without paying an APC. Read what they had to say.